As the world proceeds down the slippery slope of the digital age, privacy appears to be diminishing and becoming as quaint as cathode-ray tubes. Where once you had to look over your shoulder to see who might be following or watching you, now you need look no further than your pocket, purse, or waistband, as the following article from the New York Times details:

Privacy Lost: These Phones Can Find You

Two new questions arise, courtesy of the latest advancement in cellphone technology: Do you want your friends, family, or colleagues to know where you are at any given time? And do you want to know where they are?

Obvious benefits come to mind. Parents can take advantage of the Global Positioning System chips embedded in many cellphones to track the whereabouts of their phone-toting children.

And for teenagers and 20-somethings, who are fond of sharing their comings and goings on the Internet, youth-oriented services like Loopt and Buddy Beacon are a natural next step.

Sam Altman, the 22-year-old co-founder of Loopt, said he came up with the idea in early 2005 when he walked out of a lecture hall at Stanford.

“Two hundred students all pulled out their cellphones, called someone and said, ‘Where are you?’ � he said. “People want to connect.�

But such services point to a new truth of modern life: If G.P.S. made it harder to get lost, new cellphone services are now making it harder to hide.

“There are massive changes going on in society, particularly among young people who feel comfortable sharing information in a digital society,� said Kevin Bankston, a staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation based in San Francisco.

“We seem to be getting into a period where people are closely watching each other,� he said. “There are privacy risks we haven’t begun to grapple with.� [full text]

And grapple with them we must, lest more and more of our personal information become the property of big corporations, big government, or Big Brother. Be wary, my friends.